“Please, sit down, Lord Broadford, and let me explain all.” She took in a deep breath and set her shoulders back. “Then, mayhap, we can formulate a plan.”
17
David reached the cottage by mid-morning. The residence was just as the solicitor had described it: a small cottage with a dark wood door and only one small window to the right of that. The winding path through the woods had led him here, and he had noted the hoofprints along it.
Having tied his horse a short distance away, he now approached with all caution, noting that there was no smoke coming from the chimney. Did that mean that Rathbone was not within? Or had he been wise enough to realize it might alert others to his presence? The house was silent, the pale stone façade giving nothing away. He paused at the door, listening. Nothing stirred within.
He tried the handle. It gave without resistance, and the door swung inward on a room in disarray — a chair overturned, the cold hearth scattered with ash, and on the narrow bed in the far corner, the sheets thrown back and the small window above it standing open. Frederica was gone.
The relief lasted only a heartbeat before the floorboard behind him groaned.
“Hampshire.” Rathbone’s voice came from the shadows near the far wall, where he had been standing very still.
“I wondered how long it would take you.”
David turned. The man was broader than he remembered, his coat rumpled, his jaw dark with a day’s growth of beard. There was no pretense of civility left in his face — only the flat, assessing patience of someone who had been waiting and was now ready.
“Where is she?” David’s voice was low, dangerous.
Rathbone shrugged. “Gone. Slipped out through that window like a cat in the night.” His lips curled. “But it hardly matters now, does it? I did not bring her here for affection, Hampshire. I brought her here because your uncle owed me — and you will pay what he did not.”
“What I am due,” Rathbone said, and the smile that spread across his face was the smile of a man who had been patient beyond any reasonable expectation and had now finished with patience entirely. “Your uncle promised me land in Hampshire. He promised. A house of my own, acreage sufficient for a gentleman’s living, and coin enough to sustain it. All in exchange for my silence, my service, and my discretion.” The smile hardened. “And then he died — and left me nothing.”
David’s hand was on the hilt of his sword, but he did not draw it. “Whatever he may have promised you, it was not his to give at Frederica’s expense.”
“Frederica.” Rathbone said the name with a contempt that curdled the air between them.
“I would have married her. I would have been a tolerable husband — tolerable enough for a girl with no other prospects. But your uncle decided otherwise, did he not? Decided that an earl — a proper gentleman — would do where a solicitor would not.”
He was moving. David saw it too late — the slow, deliberate shuffle that had been disguised as conversation, each step bringing Rathbone closer while his words kept David’s attention on his face rather than his feet. The first blow came without warning — a short, brutal strike to the ribs that used Rathbone’s considerable weight behind it.
David staggered. A chair clattered sideways as his hip struck its edge, and it toppled, spinning across the floor. The pain was immediate and total, a bright white explosion that telescoped his vision down to a narrow point. He swung — a wide, instinctive arc — and felt his fist connect with the side of Rathbone’s jaw. The man’s head snapped sideways. A table jolted as Rathbone stumbled against it, sending a ceramic jug crashing to the floor where it shattered, the shards scattering across the worn boards like teeth.
The satisfaction lasted half a breath. Rathbone recovered, his jaw reddening, his eyes gone flat and calculating. He came at David low, under his guard, and they collided with a force that drove them both into the wall. The plaster cracked behind David’s shoulders. A framed picture — some forgotten pastoral scene — fell and smashed at their feet.
David fumbled for his sword. His fingers found the hilt, closed around it, drew the blade in a rasp of steel that filled the room. He levelled it at Rathbone’s chest?—
But Rathbone was faster than a man of his build had any right to be. He seized the chair from the floor and brought it down in a sweeping arc. The impact knocked the sword from David’s hand. It spun across the floor, catching the pallid light from the window, and came to rest beneath the table, out of reach.
They fought without weapons then — or rather, Rathbone fought, and David survived, which was the lesser of the two achievements. Rathbone struck with the economical brutalityof a man who had learned violence not in a fencingsallebut in alleys and taverns, where rules were a luxury and mercy a weakness. Every blow found its mark. David gave what he could — a knee to Rathbone’s thigh, an elbow to his ribs — but the room was too small and Rathbone too close, and the pain in David’s chest was building into something that threatened to swallow him whole.
The final blow caught him at the temple. The room tilted. He tasted copper and felt the boards beneath his back — when had he fallen? — and through the ringing in his ears, he heard Rathbone breathing hard above him.
A glint. His sword. In Rathbone’s hand now.
Rathbone swung it lightly, testing the weight. “I will gain all that was to be mine, with or without your consent,” he breathed, his grin a dark, unsettling smile that sent dread into David’s heart.
“I do not want Frederica any longer, not when I see the suffering she will cause me. But because of her father’s manipulations and because of your refusal, I will make certain she has no one to come near her again. The rest of her life will be pitiful, quiet, and filled with sorrow – and I shall be glad of it.”
David let out a groan and tried to sit up, seeing Rathbone ready the sword. He could swing his body to one side; the blow might miss his heart, but he had no strength left with which to fight. Rathbone chuckled and readied the sword.
“Away from him, you blaggard!”
The door to the house crashed back against the wall as it was flung wide open, with Lord Broadford rushing towards Rathbone. David closed his eyes in relief, pushing himself up with as much strength as he could muster, his ribs in agony with every breath he took.
“Hampshire!”
His heart strained towards her, blackness capturing the edge of his vision as he tried to search for her with his gaze, hearing the cries of Rathbone and the shouts of Lord Broadford. “Nora?”
